The field of nanoelectronics is developing rapidly, offering the
promise of new classes of electronic and optoelectronic devices for
everything from traditional data processing at near terahertz
frequencies to quantum information processing. This promise will not be
fully realized, however, until numerous materials issues are confronted,
such as interface and alloy fluctuations in semiconductor
nanostructures, that can result in unacceptable non-uniformity of real
devices. In this talk, I will describe the approaches currently being
used to develop ab initio-based atomistic models for the growth of
III-V semiconductor materials which necessarily must account for the
complexity of III-V surfaces including surface reconstructions and the
zincblende lattice structure. I will describe in detail a growth model
for InAs developed at HRL which has been successful in capturing nearly
all known experimental trends. Two main results will be highlighted, (1)
the understanding of the As flux dependence of island nucleation on
InAs(001) and (2) the unique aspects of the surface reconstruction
transition on this surface.
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